[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 77 (Wednesday, May 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S6467]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                           AN ETHICAL DILEMMA

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, there is a lot of emotion and not 
much rationality to the question of whether we use fetal tissue to 
assist people who have problems, particularly with Parkinson's disease.
  It is interesting that in the U.S. Senate, many of those who support 
the use of fetal tissue comprise those who are totally opposed to 
abortions.
  I believe their stand makes sense, much more sense than those who 
emotionally oppose use of fetal tissue.
  If for a reason of taste, or culture, or religion, people are opposed 
to any transplant, I understand it.
  When I die, if my eyes or any part of me can be used to be of 
assistance to someone else, I want that done.
  I would think most people who have had an abortion would want the 
same.
  The requirements are very strict. You cannot make any money on it. 
You cannot designate to whom the tissue would go. You cannot even know 
to whom it is going.
  Joan Beck has written a column in the Chicago Tribune that outlines 
the situation clearly, and I ask that it be printed in the Record.
  The column follows:
               [From the Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1995]

  An Ethical Dilemma--In Defense of Fetal Tissue Transplants to Treat 
                         Neurological Disorders

                             (By Joan Beck)

       He was 59 years old and he had had Parkinson's disease for 
     eight years. His body was becoming increasingly rigid and 
     immobile. He had trouble moving and talking clearly. He had 
     tremors he couldn't stop and he had to give up his job.
       The medication that had helped early in the onset of the 
     illness could no longer give him much relief, despite 
     increasing doses. As the disease inexorably progressed, he 
     decided to try a new, experimental treatment, despite the 
     intense political and medical controversy that has marked its 
     development.
       Surgeons inserted several grafts of fetal tissue into one 
     side of his brain. A month later, they repeated the procedure 
     on the other side. The transplants came from seven donors, 
     aborted babies from 6\1/2\ to 9 weeks old.
       Within a few weeks after the surgery, the man's condition 
     improved markedly, according to a report in the current issue 
     of the New England Journal of Medicine. He could once again 
     handle daily activities, even take part in an active exercise 
     program. He needed less medication, but now it was much more 
     effective.
       A year and a half after the first transplant, the patient 
     had surgery on his ankle to repair damage from a fracture 
     years earlier. As he was recovering from the operation, he 
     suffered a massive pulmonary embolism and died.
       Studying his brain after death, doctors found conclusive 
     evidence that the transplants had worked as hoped. The fetal 
     neurons had survived, grown and were functioning, replacing 
     the patient's damaged brain cells, just as the improvement in 
     his symptoms had indicated.
       An estimated 200 transplants of fetal tissue into human 
     brains have been done over the past several years. Some have 
     been performed in other countries, some under scientifically 
     questionable circumstances. Results have been uneven and 
     often discouraging.
       The case reported this week is important because it is the 
     first to prove that fetal tissue transplants can survive and 
     function and that they can be linked to a patient's 
     improvement.
       The long-range implications are medical, political and 
     ethical. The success story offers eventual hope for hundreds 
     of thousands of patients, not only with Parkinson's disease 
     but also with Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease and 
     other disorders caused by brain cell impairment and 
     destruction for which no good treatment or cure is now 
     available.
       Much research is still necessary, however. More data are 
     needed about optimal size of the grafts, whether the tissue 
     can be frozen in advance, which patients are likely to 
     benefit, how long improvement will last, whether the 
     underlying disease will eventually destroy the new brain 
     cells.
       Fetal tissue is considered necessary for transplants 
     because it can survive and grow where grafts of more mature 
     cells do not. It can take on new biological functions, unlike 
     other cells. And the recipient's body is not so likely to 
     reject it.
       But the research has been slowed in the past for political 
     and ethical reasons.
       The problem is that such transplants almost always must 
     come from abortions--and that has raised fierce and 
     intractable opposition from pro-life forces. They see the 
     possibility that women will deliberately get pregnant and 
     have an abortion to provide a graft for a loved one--or even 
     worse, sell the tissue on some sort of medical black market.
       Even with tight controls, abortion opponents argue, using 
     tissue from aborted fetuses will make it easier for women to 
     decide to have an abortion because they can rationalize that 
     some desperately ill person could benefit and that might ease 
     any guilt feelings they may have.
       Should fetal transplants eventually prove to be of great 
     medical benefit and become widely used, it will be even 
     harder to rally the nation to oppose abortion--the source of 
     such grafts--pro-life leaders fear.
       In response to anti-abortion fervor, the Reagan 
     administration prohibited the use of federal funds for 
     research using fetal tissue for humans, a major setback 
     because most research grants are based on federal approval. 
     Some experiments did continue, however, using private money, 
     and in other countries.
       Under mounting pressure from Congress, President Bush 
     attempted a compromise. He authorized a grant of more than $2 
     million to study whether fetal tissue obtained as a result of 
     miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies--not deliberate 
     abortions--could be used for transplants.
       The answer turned out to be no. Out of 1,500 such fetuses 
     tested, all but seven were unsuitable because of chromosome 
     errors (a major cause of miscarriage) or problems with 
     bacteria and virus contamination.
       In 1993, President Clinton finally lifted the ban on 
     federal funding for fetal tissue research. The use of such 
     transplants is carefully governed by state and federal laws 
     and government and medical guidelines similar to those that 
     cover other transplants, including the Uniform Anatomical 
     Gift Act which has been adopted in all states.
       The stark facts remain. Abortion is legal in the United 
     States. About 1.5 million abortions occur every year. Aborted 
     tissue is now discarded, even though it holds the potential 
     for successfully treating several terrible, intractable 
     diseases.
       Abortion is a tragedy, as is death from gunshot wounds and 
     traffic accidents. But the success of fetal tissue grafts 
     isn't going to encourage abortion any more than organ 
     transplants increase car crashes and murders.
       Research is under way to find other means to treat 
     neurological disorders, some of it building on findings from 
     fetal tissue studies. But until these experiments are 
     successful, surely it is more ethical and merciful to try to 
     use fetal tissue than simply destroy it.
     

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